Each focuses on a specific highway and list motel and diner stops.
[1] Example: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
I should have it done and posted to archive.org this Fall sometime.
It was collected by a private collector in New York then recently sold to the university of Toronto. I first heard about it it maybe a decade ago and have been waiting for a coffee table book since.
I would also be interested in recipes to go with the historic menus. For example dishes with sweet and sour have changed a lot from more liquid and vinagery to the goopy sweet mess we get now.
https://ahundredyearsago.com/2021/10/17/old-fashioned-jelly-...
EDIT: a postcard from the Ranch House: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:x920...
Guess it's time to go back.
Which is what Internet Archive has as their latest scrape too.
The previous scrape worked: https://web.archive.org/web/20250906155345/https://www.roads...
What is odd about this state of affairs is that everyone wants Mom and Pop, family owned, unique diners, however, where do people go when the kids in the back want their Happy Meals? You always know what you are going to get in a chain, and that is the magic of franchising.
"The restaurant was originally named Johnny Reb's Chick-Chuck-'N'-Shake, and was sold in 1966 to A. T. Davis, Tubby's brother, who became a franchisee of Col. Harlan Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken."
http://www.highwayhost.org/DavisBros/davisbros1.htm
https://mistercola.com/products/vintage-placemat-davis-broth...
Where ever the parent decides to go.
Due to the decline of the High Street, there are always independent cafes, sandwich shops and coffee shops that come and go. These take advantage of the spots that used to be where decent shops that used to be. However, few of them have enough customers to last more than a year or two.
On the surface there is more choice than ever. However, the best bakery in town closed down as they couldn't balance the books any more. There also used to be several fish and chips shops and they went too, although it has to be said that there are no longer any fish in British waters, so that is no surprise.
Retail is always in flux, however, the place is turning into a veritable 'food desert' with a choice between junk food slop and pretentious gentrified expense, with no middle ground.
America is different because you do get places in the sparsely populated West where passing trade will support a diner, gas station and general store but not a gaggle of franchised chains. If the interstate comes to town though, you know that will change.
Whenever I'm in there, it seems busy. Part of the USP is that it's open 24/7 (something increasingly rare)...
Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that is a thing in America.
In the 80s where I worked, we had a large project to enhance the systems to our plant in Ireland. So for a couple of months a team from Ireland came here to the US to work with us.
The question "How do you want your eggs" at a breakfast place confused them to no end. Seems at the time in Ireland, eggs only were cooked one way, kind of like pouched. I do not know if that is now still true.
Incredibly hard to find real documentation on how short-order cooks work, but the best resource I've found (though brief) is Fast Foods and Short Order Cooking, by Pepper, Pratt and Winnick (1984). I've been dreaming about writing a manual for years, but I'd have to find some shifu to teach me. I was a grill cook (as a young person), but never had to handle the entire thing.
